So-called “street dogs” often have a care-giver keeping an eye out for them

After an overnight flight from London, I was delighted to be welcomed to Delhi this morning by a remarkable lady who works on the coal face of the street dogs/rabies issue. Bondana Dutta (or Bondi, as everyone calls her) is the founder of a small but rapidly growing NGO charity called Alliance of Animals and People (AAP).

Bondana resigned as a regional director for CRY ( one of the major Childrens Rights NGO’s) to pursue her work with AAP, and she has brought many skills and strengths to her new role. She believes that the way to improve animal welfare in the slums of Delhi is to start with the children: if she can convince young people of the importance of valuing animals, the rest will follow naturally. The children will pester their parents to do more for animals, and in due course, they will mature into a new generation of adults who are strongly pro-animal.

I found myself in front of an audience of children, talking about animal welfare

As an introduction to the educational projects she’s created, I travelled with Bondi to one of her projects, in a slum in South-West Delhi.

The cross-city drive to the slum gave me a taste of the lunacy of Indian traffic: half a dozen lanes of a mad mix of vehicles (from cattle-drawn carts to tuktuks to cars to trucks) barging against each other to get ahead, beeping horns instead of using indicators, yet somehow, all keeping going and reaching their destinations.

We pulled up outside the slum, and walked in through narrow laneways past people sitting outside their homes in small groups. The weather in Delhi at this time of year is pleasant: 20°C with crisp clear sunshine rather than the humid 30°C plus of mid-summer. For people and animals alike, it’s a comfortable climate to be outdoors.

We walked a few hundred yards from where we’d parked the car

After walking a few hundred yards, we came to a fenced off courtyard in the middle of an open area: around fifty children were waiting for us there. This was Bondi’s community: children aged between five and fifteen who have signed up for regular classes in animal welfare. An AAP worker, a former teacher, was giving a class when we arrived. She acted as an interpreter (the children speak Hindu, with just a smattering of English) to allow me to talk to the children.

The children gathered in the courtyard, as if in an outdoor classroom

I asked a few questions and learned a lot: most of the children cared for street dogs which they view as their “family dogs”. They feed them a mixed diet of scraps, and they make sure that they are vaccinated against rabies and where possible sterilised. I asked about what should be done if a person was bitten by a dog: the children knew all about washing a wound thoroughly then seeking post-exposure rabies vaccination.

A hamster, kept as a pet, was an unexpected critter to find in the middle of the slum

I then asked the children if they kept any other animals as pets – cats are popular (but they aren’t as visible as street dogs here), some children kept pet fish, and one girl disappeared for a few minutes, astonishing me when she returned cuddling her pet hamster, Pooni.

I stayed for half an hour talking the the children, and the end, they sang a song to me about the importance of looking after animals well. I came away feeling full of hope and optimism: in the three years that she’s been visiting this slum, Bondi has created a population of young people who care passionately about animals, and in the process, they are taking the necessary steps to ensure that they – and their pets – are protected against rabies.

The AAP model is only being used on a small scale at the moment – Bondi would like to have more full time employees to visit more slums running classes like this, but funds are scarce. Bondi has great vision, and with the right support, her dream of all Indian children being taught about the importance of caring for animals will come true.

This slum-dwelling goat was dressed to cope with the cool February evenings